Astonishing #28

In "Age Before Beauty," a 45-year-old man finds himself on a planet where time flows backward, marrying a woman who is physically 21—though she knows her youth won’t last. As their relationship deepens, she quietly grapples with the fleeting nature of her adult years, while he struggles to reconcile his age with the strange, shifting reality around them.

In "No Evidence!" from *Astonishing* #28 (1953), a communist spy whose method of stealing secrets involves swallowing them and later extracting them via stomach pump finds his deadly routine catastrophically disrupted when he swallows a concentrated atomic energy capsule—leaving a gaping, impossible wound in his abdomen. The story unfolds with chilling precision, turning a cold war espionage trope into a visceral, grotesque spectacle of unintended consequence.

In "The Hidden Planet!" from Astonishing #28 (1953), an alien arrives in a golden spaceship claiming his entire planet is made of gold—only to reveal his true origin when a thief tries to steal the craft. The twist redefines what "golden" means, as the alien explains he hails from the sun itself.